Yesterday Eric Rimmer, on the sustainability slide show discussion, had replied to my comment about the problem with using I=PAT for the \u201cchicken and egg\u201d problems of overshoot relating the problem of population vs. wealth. He said:<\/p>\n
Thank you. Phil. Interesting thoughts, though I can\u2019t detect what you suggest we should DO?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nEric,
\nWell, I\u2019ve been thinking about that too\u2026 Because the way natural systems steer their development is by using their operating surplus to redirect their development. \u00a0We should get Barack to realize his mistake of saying it\u2019s OK to spend all our effort and surpluses to get back to using up the earth\u2019s resources ever faster again.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s unequivocally what we\u2019re doing when both government policy and stimulus are to rekindle the use of investment for maximizing the growth of investment. It\u2019s a policy to maximize the exponential rate at which we add to the physical overhead the earth has to support . It follows the model of the past that, before ~1960 , generally resulted in making wealth more available and cheaper, but now does not do that.<\/p>\n
Now the tables are turned and compound expansion is making real wealth less available and physically more expensive. What we need is to continually simplify and improve technology *to conserve resources by reducing the real cost of the system*. The standard investment growth plan results in causing the markets to make choices for the opposite purpose.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s going to happen too, if we just let nature crunch the system the hard way and only a simple society survives. Avoiding that would mean voluntarily ending the limitless use of investments to enrich investors. Ther\u2019d have to be some reason the investor or the community would choose to use the same earnings for something sustainable.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more than a little there to think here, of course. The hard fact is that the arithmetic of diminishing returns says *after a point more investment means less good*, and that conflicts with many of our popular values.<\/p>\n
The question to keep coming back to is \u201cHow can we follow nature\u2019s strategy of completing things as our limit to growth?\u201d, rather than let all we\u2019ve built fail for our not being up to the challenge. Letting things fail does work too, of course. It might be a better choice than accept a whole bundle of cheats that will just, again, just make the next crisis that much bigger.<\/p>\n
To reduce the whole physical system overhead the system surplus would need to find what is most valued and practical and steer clear of the money pumping that replaces perfectly good things with others that are actually ever more impractical.<\/p>\n
For my own choices I\u2019m partly spending what I have on finding a sustainable career. My old career as an architect collapsed partly because the whole economy wanted ever uselessly fancier and bigger stuff, paid for with ever less believable promises, and collapsed because of that. To support what I want to sustain in smaller ways I happened to decided to cut back on some charities, the hard sell ones, and get daily delivery of the NY Times again. The Times is such a good broad spectrum information resource, and I really don\u2019t want it to go away.<\/p>\n
Does that help?<\/p>\n
Phil Henshaw \u00b8\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8.\u2022\u00b4 \u00af `\u2022.\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8<\/p>\n
\u2026.
\nMy prior comment to which he responded was:<\/p>\nEric,
\nYes, that\u2019s what \u201cthe math\u201d says, to limit both population and wealth. The question is whether to do that \u201csteering\u201d system with \u201cself-constraint\u201d or by \u201cimposed control\u201d.<\/p>\nPeople have come to that impasse over and over, it seems to me, because we know almost nothing about how people or natural systems develop self-control and are justly bothered by what we do know about the workability of imposed controls. We keep having to ask whether to use the solution we don\u2019t understand how to use, or the one we know won\u2019t work\u2026.<\/p>\n
What I keep looking at and pointing to are the examples nature offers of systems that show remarkable self-control, all over the place. The sciences just don\u2019t seem to be studying or discussing how they work, or how to apply the same principles elsewhere, so that\u2019s my theory of why we don\u2019t know what to do.<\/p>\n
How natural systems develop self-control looks to me to be the same way they grow. They take a portion of their product and use it as a resource for *building onto the process*. As new parts take new directions and old parts atrophy, the change direction. That is true steering, not outside control. It\u2019s the system\u2019s surplus that seems to be the natural resource for changing the system\u2019s directions. I think it seems to be a tremendously versatile strategy.<\/p>\n
It raises lots of new questions, of course, and that can seem slow going sometimes because you\u2019re then no longer in a world of automatic answers. The population debate has been very repetitive for centuries apparently, though. If we keep asking the same questions in about the same way it seems likely it will just lead to the same inadequate answers.<\/p>\n
Phil Henshaw \u00b8\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8.\u2022\u00b4 \u00af `\u2022.\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Yesterday Eric Rimmer, on the sustainability slide show discussion, had replied to my comment about the problem with using I=PAT for the \u201cchicken and egg\u201d problems of overshoot relating the problem of population vs. wealth. He said: Thank you. Phil. Interesting thoughts, though I can\u2019t detect what you suggest we should DO? Eric, Well, I\u2019ve … Continue reading Real steering for the chicken and egg<\/span>